


The Reborn and the Rose

by Vigs



Series: The Doctor and the Dreamers [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-14 09:30:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4559481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vigs/pseuds/Vigs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Rose learn to relate to one another after the Doctor's regeneration, but being in a relationship with a time-travelling alien is never simple. Doomsday compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alien

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct sequel to my story "The Warrior and the Wolf," and builds off the Nine/Rose relationship established there. Rating and warnings are for later chapters. This chapter takes place at the end of "The Christmas Invasion."

For once, Rose was grateful that the Doctor wouldn’t be joining in the festive domesticity. Christmas dinner with Jackie and Mickey was just what she needed to make her head stop spinning, ground her a little, help her make sense of her life again, because for the first time, she was realizing that she had forgotten.  
  
The Doctor was fantastic and kind and heroic and brilliant and all those other things, but he was an alien. Not just an amazingly clever man with a few weird psychic powers, an alien. Rose had seen his mind time and again while he went through the slow process of acclimating her to it, but she hadn’t realized until now that she didn’t see that incomprehensible maelstrom as him, not really.  
  
Today he saved the world in pajamas and a bathrobe. Before that, thousands of years in the future, he made love to her for the first time, knocked her unconscious, and packed her off back home so that she would be safe while he died. In between, he changed his face and his voice and apparently just about everything else about him.  
  
That was what he was. That was what she was in love with.  
  
It was too much, so for now, she wasn’t going to worry about it. Cooking with mum was lovely; they had a whole little routine for Christmas dinner that they’d worked out over the years, evolving from when Rose was too young to do more than stir bowls her mother pointed at. Even now, Jackie was the one who chopped everything that needed chopping, just out of force of habit, and Rose basted the turkey with a single-minded meticulousness that it really didn’t need. Just like every other Christmas.  
  
Mickey got there just in time to carve, and brought over a bottle of something cheap and sweet, and they all laughed and passed things back and forth and talked and talked without saying much of anything.  
  
And then he walked in, and wow. He’d always been magnetic, but now he looked just edible, with that little smile on his new face. The smile was new, too, but she thought she recognized the feeling behind it.  
  
What was really new was the way he blended seamlessly into the warm feelings of family and Christmas that had filled the apartment. Even Jackie seemed fine with him there, making smalltalk and passing the turkey just as readily as she did with Mickey.  
  
That was when Rose decided that it didn’t matter what he was. Nothing could be more human than the gathering around that table, and if he could fit there, then she could fit with him. Since he was there, he must agree.  
  
When they stood outside the TARDIS together and he confirmed that he still wanted her to come with him, she almost kissed him right in front of her mum.  
  
“You’re not leaving right away, are you?” Jackie asked. “Only you just got back.”  
  
“No, can’t leave for a bit yet,” the Doctor said. “I’ll have to fix up the TARDIS first. Someone pried her open and messed about inside, and then, er, someone else seems to have crashed her into London just a bit. But I’ll have her up and running in about a week.”  
  
“We’ll be here for New Year’s, then!” Rose said, grinning up at him.  
  
“Suppose we will.” He beamed back. “Got to hand it to humans, you certainly know how to celebrate an arbitrary milestone. Champagne and fireworks and snogging, brilliant! I remember one human colony, couple thousand years from now, that ended up on a planet with an incredibly short orbit--just five weeks long! And on top of that, there were two separate groups of colonists, and of course they both started their local year on the day they landed. The government eventually had to ban New Year’s celebrations because no one was ever getting any work done.”  
  
“Well, I’m going back inside,” Jackie said. “Real snow or not, it’s freezing out here. You two can stay out and natter about planets and colonies until New Year’s if you like.”  
  
“I’ll spend the night in the flat, mum,” Rose said. “Just let me get some things from the TARDIS first.”  
  
“All right, sweetheart. Mickey and I’ll go do the washing up, and then the three of us will have a cuppa before bed, how does that sound?”  
  
Mickey did not look entirely pleased with this plan, but he went along with it, and soon Rose and her new Doctor were alone in the TARDIS once again.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he blurted suddenly. “Been wanting to say that since I woke up, but first it was the Sycorax and then Harriet Jones and then your mother, and it’s not really the sort of conversation I want to have in front of any of them. I’m not sorry I sent you home, but I’m sorry about...how I did it.”  
  
“Which part?” Rose asked. “The part where you sent the TARDIS off while I was asleep, or the part where you shagged me first?”  
  
“The--the second one. I hope you’re not too--how’s your head?”  
  
“It hurt for a bit,” she admitted. “But it’s fine now. Is that why you decided to do it? Because you knew it’d knock me out so you could swan off?”  
  
He winced.  
  
“Wow. Well, least it felt a bit nicer than getting knocked over the head with a mallet, or something,” she said.  
  
“A bit!?” he protested, indignant.  
  
Rose laughed.  
  
“Oh, all right, a lot. I understand why you did it, and you’d better not do it again--send me away, I mean, not the sex. But let’s not fight right now. It’s Christmas.”  
  
“Fine by me!” he agreed. “What should we do instead? Can’t take the TARDIS anywhere just yet, but we could always go exploring inside her--there are rooms in here I haven’t seen in years! Or poke about London for a bit. Or we could find out whether I like telly this time around--what do you think, Rose Tyler, does this look like a telly-watching face to you?”  
  
“I think if you tried to sit still long enough to see a whole program, you’d explode,” she told him. “And I’m going up to my mum’s for a cuppa and then to bed in a few, remember?”  
  
“Oh.” He deflated a bit. “I thought maybe since we weren’t fighting tonight, you might want to stay the night on the TARDIS after all.”  
  
Rose rolled her eyes. “Brilliant, Doctor. I’ll just call mum up and tell her not to expect me because I’m going to be shagging my alien boyfriend, shall I?”  
  
“Ah--well--” he started sputtering like a fish. “Rose, I’m not really--with the parents, and the labels, and the--bit too old to be a boyfriend--don’t even know all the relevant social norms in your time--a little too domestic for me--”  
  
“I was kidding,” she told him. “Blimey, never seen anyone so anxious to avoid being my boyfriend before. I’m going to go get my overnight things.”  
  
It wasn’t like she wanted to make things “domestic” between them. It just would have been nice if he hadn’t seemed so panicked at the prospect. As morning afters went--or getting on a couple of days after now, whatever--this one had the most warning flags ever.  
  
Not that she’d be listening to any of them. But it’d be nice if he gave her some indication that he still cared about her.  
  
When she walked back into the console room, overnight bag slung over her shoulder, he was still there, darting around the console. Watching him gave her a sort of double-vision; on the one hand, he was so clearly the Doctor that she didn’t know how she could ever have doubted him, but on the other...the jacket was gone, the ears, the short-cropped hair she’d scraped her nails across, the broad hands that had worked her body so reverently, all gone, replaced by a stranger.  
  
He darted around the console to her and laid his hand against her cheek, first gently, then more purposefully, touching his fingertips to her temples.  
  
“May I?” he whispered, and she sent her agreement back to him in a wave of feeling that made him suck in air like he’d been drowning.  
  
No words or images passed between them, just feelings, the same feelings as before, alien and intense and completely him. She did her best to send him back her love, but couldn’t help but tack on her confusion and hurt and everything else. There was no way to lie like this, or at least, if there was, she didn’t know it.  
  
 _Can’t you just tell me?_  she thought at him unintentionally.  _Can’t you just say how you feel in words?_  
  
But her thoughts were swamped beneath the tide of him, although the connection remained shallow, and she let them drift away into silence.  
  
She wasn’t sure how long they stood there like that before he pulled back, holding her head between his strange new hands and gently kissing her forehead with unfamiliar lips.  
  
“Good night, Rose Tyler,” he said, and she couldn’t help but think  _Couldn’t the accent have stayed, at least? Just one solid thing for me to latch onto?_  
  
“Good night, Doctor,” she said, and left the TARDIS.


	2. New Year's

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place between "The Christmas Invasion" and "New Earth." Contains explicit sexual content.

The Doctor hadn’t been a man who liked parties in a while, and it was nice to discover that side of himself again. “Mysterious older man who whisked Rose Tyler off her feet” was a fun role to play, too, and her mates were absolutely eating up his edited descriptions of their adventures.  
  
“I could hear Rose in the hold, but the door was locked and the key was gone, and the water was rising every minute,” he told his rapt audience. “I managed to pick the lock when it was about up to her neck, and we got in and patched up that hole before we all went down. And then we find out that Cassandra--the woman who’d organized the whole thing--was in the process of making off with the only life boat! I hauled her back before she could get away and, well, let’s just say she won’t be trying  _that_  again any time soon.”  
  
“What did you do with her?” asked a chubby ginger youth of twenty or so, who’d been hanging on every word.  
  
“Ah, well,” the Doctor evaded, winking confidentially. “What happens in international waters stays in international waters, you know. Right, Rose?”  
  
He looked around, and realized that he couldn’t see Rose anywhere.  
  
“She’s out on the balcony,” his ginger acolyte said helpfully.  
  
“I’ll just go and join her then.” His audience protested, but he waved them off and headed out to the balcony with a glass of champagne in each hand, in case Rose had run out.  
  
She was nowhere to be seen, and the Doctor looked around in confusion for a moment--had he been led astray?  
  
“Up here, Doctor,” Rose’s voice said from somewhere off to his left. When he looked, he realized that she’d apparently clambered onto the roof via a chest-high ledge.  
  
“Grab these glasses?” he asked, holding them out to her. She took them, and he climbed up after her, retrieving his when he was situated. They leaned back on the rough surface of the roof, side by side, sipping their champagne.  
  
“You’d have hated this, before,” Rose pointed out. “The party, I mean.”  
  
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You would’ve been the one tracking me down.”  
  
“Are there things that can’t possibly change?” she asked. “Or is anything fair game?”  
  
“Well, Time Lords can change over time just like anyone else can,” he said, turning her question over in his mind. “I’d say the things you think are important won’t change during regeneration, but what you think is important could change over the course of a lifetime, if that makes sense.”  
  
“Did you think I was important?”  
  
“Of course,” he said, honestly startled that she’d ask. “Rose, you know how I feel about you. You’ve felt it.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
They sat and sipped in silence for a while, until the sound of a chanted countdown began to reach them from inside.  
  
“Countdown! Love a good countdown,” the Doctor said. “Up there with big red buttons, don’t you think?”  
  
Rose drained her champagne glass, then plucked the Doctor’s from his hand, placing both of them on the flat surface of the ledge they’d climbed up.  
  
“Nah, I hate waiting,” she said, and kissed him with four seconds still to go.  
  
It was the first time they’d kissed since he’d changed, and he sagged against her in relief. He hadn’t known whether she’d want to have a physical relationship with him any more, after everything that had happened.  
  
She wasn’t projecting her feelings towards him, though. In fact, she seemed to be intentionally holding back. All he got was a whiff of...fear?  
  
“Rose?” he asked, pulling away. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Can’t we just snog for a bit?” she asked. “Without any mind stuff or questions or anything?”  
  
“If that’s what you want,” he said.  
  
It was strange, kissing her without touching her mind. Trying  _not_  to touch her mind, even though he could--the trail had been so well-worn now, and when she started to relax into his kisses, she opened for him automatically. He knew it was just habit, it wasn’t a real invitation, but it was impossible to really enjoy the kiss while focusing on keeping his mental walls up, holding himself back.  
  
Desperate for some distance, he pulled his lips from hers and trailed kisses down her neck to the tops of her breasts where they pushed up from under her top. They were lovely breasts, of course, everything about Rose was lovely, but just now their distance from her temples was their most attractive feature.  
  
She seemed to be enjoying what he was doing (and that was rubbish, having to rely on her actions instead of feeling her enjoying it, what if he did something she didn’t like and didn’t realize because he wasn’t used to reading body language in these situations?), scraping her fingernails over his scalp, wriggling against him and making little whimpering sounds. It was probably a good thing that he had to hold himself apart and clear-headed, since one of them needed to be in charge of making sure they didn’t fall off the roof.  
  
Once he adjusted to not being connected to her, it started to be fun. He wasn’t usually in a position to enjoy every sound and face that she made, to analyze every taste, the subtle differences in skin texture between her arm and her breast and her stomach. She was turning to jelly in his arms, and there was something in doing that to her while remaining...aloof, almost.  
  
Rose grabbed his hand and pushed it up her skirt. He discovered that she wasn’t wearing anything under it, and wondered whether she had planned this rooftop seduction or if that was habitual for her. He thought it was probably the former, and there was something very appealing in the thought that she’d been wanting this that badly.  
  
Two of his newly-slender fingers slid easily into her, and she clenched and gasped and wriggled. He was going to make her come, right here on the roof of her friend’s flat, without so much as removing his jacket or raising his pulse rate.  
  
Before long her skirt was hiked up around her waist and his head was between her legs. She was wet and responsive and inarticulate, her hands wandering restlessly from his head to his shoulders to the tiles beside her and back. It was a strange sort of luxury, being detached enough to analyze the chemical makeup of her fluids, to push her closer to orgasm through a deliberate and analytical process of trial and error instead of on instinct and telepathic cues.  
  
She was loud when she came, and he wondered whether the partygoers inside could hear her, were elbowing each other and telling dirty jokes about Rose’s mysterious older man.  
  
He could still feel the aftershocks going through her when she squirmed away from him, apparently oversensitive.  
  
“God, that was good,” she sighed, pulling him up to lay beside her and smoothing her skirt back down. The Doctor gave her a grin that could possibly have been characterized as smug.  
  
She kissed him, and her mind was wide open, beautiful and inviting. He managed to hold himself back from making contact in a way she would notice. It felt easier than it had before, now that he was thinking of this as something he was doing for her and to her instead of something they were doing together. She probably wouldn’t like that thought, if she saw it. He wasn’t sure he particularly liked it himself.  
  
“Is there anything I can…?” she asked, trailing off suggestively.  
  
“Not without…” he trailed off in kind, touching his own temple to show what he meant.  
  
“Right.” Rose cuddled up against him, slipping her hand under his jacket to rest against one of his hearts. “I’m just not ready for that yet. But I will be, I think.”  
  
“You don’t have to be, Rose. We could just...this would be fine. Just this. Or not even this. Long as you’re with me.”  
  
“No, I will be,” she said, and kissed his cheek.  
  
He wrapped his arms around her, and they silently watched the stars until someone opened the door to yell that they should stop shagging on the roof and rejoin the party.


	3. New Earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place at the end of "New Earth."

“She couldn’t have left a bit of herself in my head, could she?” Rose asked the Doctor over tea after they left New Earth. “Because it seemed a bit convenient, the way she was fine with dying all of a sudden. What if she hid away in me somehow?”  
  
“Wouldn’t work,” the Doctor said. “Two complete human minds can’t both fit in one human brain for long.”  
  
“How long?”  
  
“In an average human brain, one mind would start suffering permanent damage after, ooh, half an hour? It’d be fully subsumed by the controlling mind within a day.”  
  
Rose put her hand to her own forehead in alarm. “Half an hour? How long was she in me?”  
  
“In an average human brain, I said,” he repeated. “Yours is a bit, erm, roomier. You’re fine.”  
  
“Are you sure? And are you sure she didn’t leave a bit of herself in me, somehow? Can you check?” She was chewing on her bottom lip, nervously trying to feel around the inside of her own mind for anything that felt off.  
  
“I can if you’d like,” the Doctor said warily. “I’d have to go pretty deep to be sure, though.”  
  
“Worth it,” Rose said decisively, draining her mug. “Go on, then.”  
  
He took a last sip from his own, then reached for her temples.  
  
Having Cassandra in her head had hurt like a vise around her skull, and when she’d woken up from her one time with the (old) Doctor her head had been pounding fit to shatter. Thanks to those recent memories, Rose realized that she’d started associating telepathy with pain, previous evidence notwithstanding.  
  
She’d forgotten how good it felt, having the Doctor in her head. When he gently probed her mind, it was like feeling herself sinking into cool water. It was familiar and perfect and she loved it--loved him, and he could see that, and she could feel his joy at finding those feelings in her still.  
  
_Nothing in here but Rose Tyler,_  he told her when his coolness had filled her completely.  _Not a hint of trampoline._  
  
He began to pull back then, steadily but with a hint, almost a flavor, of reluctance. Reflexively, she caught him, sent welcome to him, opened herself for him more.  
  
_Stay,_  she told him.  
  
_If I stay, I’ll want to--  
  
Yes.  
  
But you weren’t ready._  
  
She opened herself farther, showed him all the things she was afraid of:  _You left, we were so close and then you were gone, and you were going to die and be gone forever, and I found you but you left anyway, and you’re you but not the same you, and I want the old you and I want this you and I don’t want you to leave me again, please don’t leave me again, don’t leave!_  
  
If they’d been speaking out loud, she never would have said anything so needy. There was no way to hide here, though, not her feelings for him or her shameful fear that with him gone, she’d be back where she started, stuck on Earth and without hope--shameful because she didn’t want that to be why she couldn’t lose him, and it really wasn’t, but she still felt it.   
  
She wanted words of reassurance, but the Doctor didn’t give her any. Instead he filled her mind, accepted her pain and her fear and her embarrassment over feeling it and smoothed it all over with himself. He was so very present that his absence was almost unimaginable, like trying to imagine the absence of air.  
  
Remembering that she had a physical body, she reached out to pull him closer without breaking their connection and kissed him. The Doctor slid out of his chair to kneel on the floor beside hers, and she had to bend down a bit awkwardly despite his height, but his lips felt almost as good as his mind.  
  
Random thoughts and memories were floating between them now, and she could feel her mind stretching in unnameable directions to accommodate him.  **The face of a man with a black goatee -- a red-handled umbrella in his hand -- “One day I shall come back.” -- the sensation of being near a paradox --**  
  
_We need to stop,_  he told her.  _We’re going to exchange soon if we don’t stop._  
  
_Do it, I don’t care._  
  
_I don’t want to hurt you._  
  
_Do it!_  She pushed forward, wedging her mind deeper into his own.  
  
There was a feeling like surrender and joy, and then she was flooded with him, unable to think, unable to do anything but accept the torrent of Doctor within her.  
  
When she came back to herself, they were panting against each other, his hands still on her temples as he slowly eased himself out of her mind.  
  
“Was that…” she cleared her throat. “Was that it? Total psyche exchange?”  
  
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “How do you feel?”  
  
“Fine,” she said, surprised. “I mean, actually fine. My head doesn’t hurt or anything.”  
  
“Cassandra must have stretched you out a bit,” he said, returning to his chair.  
  
“Hell of a silver lining,” she said, grinning at him with her tongue between her teeth. “Does that mean we can have sex without anything mad happening now?”  
  
“Well, the psyche exchange will still happen, but it seems like you’re used to that now, so I suppose it depends on what you mean by mad.”  
  
She jumped to her feet and held out her hand for his.  
  
“What’re we doing in the kitchen, then?” she asked.  
  
He took her hand, and a grin slowly stretched across his face.


	4. Sarah Jane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place during "School Reunion." I've been watching my way through classic Who recently, and I've gotta say, I ship the hell out of Four/Sarah Jane. I will probably write a prequel to this story with the two of them in this same universe at some point.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane sat in awkward silence while she drove to her house. It really wasn’t ideal, but with the TARDIS in a school full of Krillitanes, everyone needed to be elsewhere for the night. Sarah had offered to put everyone up, but Rose pointedly refused, and she and Mickey took the bus back to London.  
  
“I get that you want to catch up with an old friend. That’s fine. And I know you don’t like labels,” Rose had said when she pulled him aside for a brief moment before the bus came, “But whatever you want to call us, I want you to know that I will be  _extremely upset_  if you have sex with Sarah Jane, all right? So you can’t say later that you didn’t know I’d be mad.”  
  
She had then kissed him perfunctorily and glared at Sarah before getting on the bus, Mickey in tow. That probably accounted for the awkward quality of the silence.  
  
“Half a dozen regenerations, you said?” Sarah asked, finally breaking it. “Do you get younger each time?”  
  
“Not always. It’s not really something I can predict, or control.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“So, ah…” The Doctor fumbled for another conversation topic. “Anyone going to mind you bringing an old alien home?”  
  
“No, I live alone.”  
  
That wasn’t right. The Doctor kept his face carefully blank.  
  
Because he  _had_  gone back, first chance he’d gotten. He’d gotten the time a bit wrong, and come out about three years ahead of when he was now, but he’d gone back for her. There had been a boy of perhaps fifteen who called her “mum.”  
  
So he’d left. Hadn’t even let her know he was there. At the time, he’d felt like he was being incredibly noble, making sure that he didn’t disrupt the timeline that led to the happiness he saw on her face.  
  
Ripples from the Time War must have reached here. A small thing changed, and she never met the man she should have married. Maybe he was never even born. She should have a son of at least ten by now, and he would never be born either. And now that she’d confirmed that the Doctor didn’t come back earlier in her timeline, he never could.  
  
He considered telling her that for about an eighth of a second before deciding against it. It would be cruel, telling her about the wonderful life she was supposed to have. And...maybe any day now she’d meet a single dad whose son would end up calling her mum?  
  
Maybe. But given the way things usually worked out for him...probably not.  
  
 _I’m so sorry, Sarah._  
  
“Well, here we are,” Sarah said, pulling into the driveway of a small but cozy-looking house. “The inside isn’t any bigger than the outside, I’m afraid, but it’s home.”  
  
“It’s lovely,” he said. “Let’s bring K-9 in, I’ll keep working on him while you sleep.”  
  
“Please try not to blow up the place,” she said. “I don’t have alien insurance. Would you like a cup of tea?”  
  
“Please.”  
  
The inside of the house was comfortably furnished and decorated. It was very “suburbia” and didn’t seem particularly Sarah Jane to the Doctor, but her tastes had probably changed over the decades. He could hardly talk; it wasn’t as if he’d be caught dead in the clothes he wore back then.  
  
“How are things with UNIT?” Sarah asked while she prepared the tea and the Doctor began disassembling K-9.  
  
“Oh, haven’t seen them in ages,” he said. “Not in faces, in fact. They wouldn’t recognize me.”  
  
“Unless they saw the TARDIS.”  
  
“Well, yes. Bit of a giveaway, I suppose. What about you, do you still work for them?”  
  
“I never worked for them, Doctor.”  
  
“What? But you were my assistant.” He looked at her, surprised.  
  
“You know that wasn’t an official position, right?”  
  
“No, I didn’t.”  
  
“They gave me some money when you...after, and I promised not to write about anything classified. But there was never anything formal.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Actually, I think they gave me a chunk of the money that was supposed to be going to  _you_.”  
  
“They were paying me?”  
  
“You didn’t know that either?” She laughed. “Yes, and they might still be. The Brigadier would dip into the account they had for you any time you caused property damage. I expect he’s still doing it.”  
  
“Property damage? Me?” He made an offended face, hoping she’d laugh again.  
  
“It’s practically your middle name,” she said, and did. “Or, I don’t know, your surname. Dr. Property Damage.”  
  
“I resent your entirely true accusation.”  
  
They laughed together, and she leaned her head on his shoulder.  
  
“I’ve missed you,” she said.  
  
“We had some good times, didn’t we?” he asked, unwilling to admit that he’d missed her as well and open himself up for the obvious questions. “Remember that time with the whole fake town?”  
  
“Hah! Yes, remember how you were drunk on ginger beer the whole time we were there?”  
  
“I wasn’t drunk! Well, a bit tipsy, perhaps. Well, I say tipsy…”  
  
“Remember the first trip we took, when I snuck onto your TARDIS? I was so convinced you were behind the whole thing, you and your ridiculous velvet suit.”  
  
“Oi, now, I don’t think it’s fair to make fun of fashion decisions made decades ago,” he protested. “I seem to recall you having a penchant for overalls for a while.”  
  
“Overalls are practical, unlike floor-length scarves.”  
  
“Oh, you loved that scarf.”  
  
“I did,” she sighed. “Remember the lecture you gave me about knitted fabrics and knot security when I asked you to tie me up with it?”  
  
“Er...yes.” He cleared his throat.  
  
“Right, shouldn’t go there. You’ve got your little Rosebud now.”  
  
The Doctor rubbed the back of his head, not sure what to say.  
  
“Have all your regenerations had ridiculous hair? Is it some sort of Doctor constant?”  
  
“My hair is not ridiculous! I love this hair. And no, last time it was only about a centimeter long, thank you.”  
  
“You can love ridiculous things, Doctor. It doesn’t make them any less ridiculous.”  
  
“Sarah…”  
  
“You know, for a long time, I was still in love with you,” she said. “And then for an even longer time, I wasn’t sure whether I was or not. I didn’t know whether I’d beg you to take me back if I ever saw you again. And now here you are, and it’s good to see you, but I think it might be even better to know for sure that I’m not in love with you any longer.”  
  
“Oh,” he said. “That’s...good.”  
  
“It is.” She smiled, grabbed his hand, and put it to her temple. “Feel.”  
  
He could remember exactly what her mind had felt like, the last time he’d touched it. It was so different now, older and sadder. She was sending him her whole emotional state, fondness and anger and regret and a sort of bittersweet nostalgia that he had a hard time comprehending.  
  
Time Lords weren’t supposed to feel that sort of thing. When they missed the good old days, they went to them.  
  
He sent her back a wordless apology, along with the joy he’d felt when he saw her standing there, brilliant as ever.  _My Sarah Jane._  
  
“It’s been centuries for you, hasn’t it?” she asked, pulling back. “But your feelings haven’t faded. You could pick up right where we left off, if you wanted to.”  
  
He shrugged, running his hand through his hair.  
  
“Ancestral Gallifreyans didn’t live in troops like early hominids,” he said, retreating into science. “It wouldn’t be uncommon for a relationship to have decades-long breaks before picking up again. And then we’ve been time traveling for so long that societally, meeting up when one person hasn’t seen the other for centuries and the other saw them just the other day wouldn’t be particularly odd, so…”  
  
“Easier in a culture that didn’t do monogamy, of course,” Sarah Jane said shrewdly.  
  
“Well. Yes.”  
  
“I got the feeling that your Rose wasn’t particularly fond of that part of things.”  
  
“It...hasn’t really come up.”  
  
She raised her eyebrow at him.  
  
“Oh, come on, Sarah, you know me. It’s not as though I’m even capable of going about having casual sex.”  
  
“Still. You should have talked to her about it before something like this happened.”  
  
He sighed. “Yes, I’m aware, thanks. It’s been tough enough without that, all right? I just regenerated a little while ago, and...you know how it goes, one thing after another.”  
  
“I know. Life was so eventful with you.” She yawned. “Well, this old woman needs to get some sleep.”  
  
“You’re not old, Sarah.”  
  
“Not to you, maybe.” She hesitated, then gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Good night, Doctor.”  
  
“Good night, Sarah Jane.”


	5. Mickey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place at the end of "School Reunion."

“The rooms move about sometimes,” Rose told Mickey. She was giving him a tour of the TARDIS while the Doctor did something or other at the controls. “But the bedrooms all have white doors, and mine’s got a sign on it that says ‘Rose.’”  
  
“This the Doctor’s room?” Mickey asked, pointing to a door with a sign that read ‘Captain’s Quarters’ in magenta glitter glue.  
  
“He doesn’t have a room,” Rose said. She reached out to trace the letters she’d written. Somehow, she hadn’t walked past this door since… “That was Jack’s room. I made the sign for a laugh.”  
  
“Oh, yeah? What happened to Captain Cheesecake, anyway?”  
  
“I’m not actually sure,” she admitted. “It was when the Doctor regenerated. I suppose we sort of...left him behind.”  
  
“Right.” Mickey sounded smug.  
  
“Why’d you really want to come along, anyway?” Rose asked angrily. “You’d better not think you and me are getting back together just because I met the Doctor’s ex.”  
  
“Nah, I know you’re too stubborn to leave him,” he said. “But you need a friend around, Rose. He’s going to leave you someplace sooner or later, and you’ll need someone there to help you pick up the pieces.”  
  
Rose wanted to smack him.  
  
“I didn’t ask you to help,” she snapped.  
  
“Nah, but you’ll thank me later.”  
  
“Fat chance. Pick a room, I’ll come get you when it’s time for breakfast.” She walked off before she said anything else she’d regret.  
  
“You will, though,” he called after her.  
  
Fuming, she walked back down the corridor to the console room.  
  
“Rose! What happened to Mickety-Mick-Mick? Think he’s going to pass out at the first place we take him? He does seem smart enough not to get a door installed in his head, I’ll give him that, but--”  
  
Rose cut him off with a kiss, angry and intense. She just wanted to stop thinking about exes, her own irritating and possibly correct one, his brilliant and abandoned one, the way Sarah Jane had managed to keep him from temptation while Rose was still trying to decide whether or not the Doctor having this whole Skasis Paradigm thing would be a good thing, the fact that he’d spent the night at Sarah’s place--  
  
“Woah, woah!” he said, pushing her away. “Rose, calm down!”  
  
“I don’t want to calm down,” she snapped. “I want to shag.”  
  
“We should talk--”  
  
“Shag first, talk later.” She moved to kiss him again, and he ducked away.  
  
“Yes, well, it’s not exactly a turn-on when you’re projecting that sort of thing at me, you know!”  
  
“Gah!” She put her head in her hands. “Can you just be a  _normal bloke_  for once?”  
  
“Not in this case, no! I am literally incapable of having angry sex, sorry.” He waved his hands about for emphasis. “I don’t even know what you’re angry with me for! Inviting Sarah Jane aboard was  _your_  idea.”  
  
“I know, I know.” She took a deep breath. “Sorry, I just...Mickey said some things, and I saw the door to Jack’s old room, and...you left him just like you left Sarah, didn’t you? How many people have you picked up and just...dropped?”  
  
“I’ve traveled with a lot of people, Rose. And most of them have left because they wanted to.”  
  
“But not all of them.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“How many of them did you shag?”  
  
“What does  _that_  have to do with anything?”  
  
“I just want to know, all right?”  
  
He sighed. “It hasn’t always been sexual, but I’ve done psyche exchanges with ten people other than you, and one way or another I’ve lost every single one of them.”  
  
The quiet grief in his voice made her anger suddenly feel petty. She walked away to run her hand along the console, feeling the soothing hum of the TARDIS resonate up her arm.  _So many goodbyes...how lonely you must be,_  she remembered that horrible Headmaster Finch saying. She took a deep breath slowly and let it out, releasing her anger with it.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said, walking back over to hold his hand. “Do...would you like to talk about it? About any of them? Not for me, for you.”  
  
“Talk...no, I don’t,” he said. “But I could show you, if you’d like.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“There’s...an echo, sort of, in my mind, of everyone I’ve exchanged with. An imprint. You’ve got one of me in your mind too, haven’t you noticed?”  
  
Now that he mentioned it, she had, sort of. There was a part of her mind that...resonated with him, for lack of a better word. Maybe that was why she’d been able to accept the new him as the Doctor relatively easily.  
  
“Anyway,” he continued, “I could show you the imprint Sarah Jane left in my mind. Not all of it, not the parts she’d want private, but the shape of it, so to speak.”  
  
“I don’t know,” she said. “Let me think about it.”  
  
“All right.” He took her hand, searching her face. “Are you still angry with me?”  
  
“No, I don’t think so.”  
  
He kissed her. Rose responded, automatically opening her lips and her mind to him.  
  
 _Don’t leave me,_  she thought.  
  
 _All relationships end with dying or leaving. Happily ever after only works when you can close the book._  His presence in her mind felt so old and sad.  
  
 _But don’t just leave, like you did to Sarah.  
  
I tried to go back._ He sent Rose a wordless impression of there being more to the story, things that he couldn’t tell her because they were private, between him and Sarah and a different Sarah, a Sarah that could have been but wasn’t.  
  
 _I don’t understand,_  she said.  
  
 _I will never want to leave you, Rose._  Another wordless wave of feelings came. This one made Rose shiver and pull him closer, pushing her chest against his before breaking the kiss.  
  
“Since I’m not angry any more…” she said out loud.  
  
“Right.” He loosened his tie and gave her a grin that made her bite her lip. “I’ll have the TARDIS keep Mickey away from your room if he wanders.”  
  
“Come on, then.”  
  
And running hand in hand with him, laughing, it was so easy to keep herself from noticing that he’d only said he’d never  _want_  to leave her, not that he never would.


	6. Reinette

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place during the episode "The Girl in the Fireplace."

When the Doctor wanted to establish two-way telepathic contact with a human, he led them through a sort of visualization exercise. It helped them to cope with the unfamiliar data, and to have as much conscious control over the process as possible, which was much more comfortable for them than him just barging in.  
  
It also took longer, and he didn’t have that kind of time to figure out what was going on in Reinette’s mind. The only visualization he gave her was the idea of a door to close over anything she didn’t want him to see.  
  
He was rather surprised when she quickly turned it around, opening doors onto memories that she particularly wanted him to see. For instance, the sensation of her fingering herself to orgasm with thoughts of her mysterious fireplace man.  
  
She didn’t have the same latent telepathic potential as Rose, but she was strong-willed and clever, and used his moment of startled arousal to slip past his own psychic barriers while he wasn’t paying attention. She managed to rifle through his own childhood memories, mainly on the strength of her conviction that she ought to be able to.  
  
He wanted her.  
  
God, this was terrible timing. He’d only just managed to get Rose past the whole Sarah Jane thing, hadn’t even had a conversation with her about the fundamental incompatibility of exclusive relationships and time travel, and here he was fighting down a hard-on while being dragged to a ball by one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of all time.  
  
He knew, intellectually, that Rose was going to be extremely upset with him even if things didn’t go any farther than they had. His instincts, on the other hand, were telling him that Rose wasn’t even going to be  _born_  for more than two hundred years, so how could she reasonably be upset about anything he did now?  
  
“Reinette,” he said, determinedly stopping their progress. “I can’t dance with you. You know I can’t. You don’t have the position yet to bring a stranger in strange clothing with you to court.”  
  
“I know,” she said. “Do you think me foolish enough to give up my ambitions for a childhood dream? The ball does not begin for another hour, Doctor. I was taking you somewhere that we could enjoy a bit more privacy.”  
  
“...ah.” There was no way he could possibly prepare her mind to join with his in the space of an hour. That was an objective fact, which was much easier to keep in mind than the subjective idea of infidelity. “Reinette, I can’t. I mean, I really, literally cannot.”  
  
“Then stay for a moment only,” she said, pulling him into a sitting room and closing and locking the door behind them. “Give to me whatever you can, and I’ll ask no more.”  
  
She kissed him. He wondered whether she’d had classes in kissing, as well as in politics and the arts and everything else. She was really incredibly good at it. Her mind was lovely too, organized and disciplined and fiercely ambitious, as well as being sensual and welcoming and entirely obsessed with him.  
  
He didn’t like the part of him that greedily drank in her worship. That was what enabled him to finally break away, using his hands on her waist (how had they gotten there?) to firmly hold her back.  
  
“I need to go. My friends could be in danger.”  
  
“Your lover and her friend, you mean.”  
  
He only looked at her solemnly. She sighed.  
  
“Of course. I shall lead you back to the door to your own world.”  
  
As soon as he was back on the ship, he realized what had happened to Rose and Mickey, and began to prepare for their rescue. If he seemed drunk when he came in, that should work as a signal to Rose that it was a ruse, right? Since she knew that alcohol didn’t affect him like that.  
  
She seemed upset anyway. He didn’t need his time sense to see an extremely unpleasant conversation coming in their future.  
  
And then it was all run and plan and run to the rescue, and then it looked like there may not be a future for him and Rose, not for a while, anyway.  
  
“The slow path,” Reinette called it. Very, very slow. He wouldn’t actually have to wait thousands of years, but he would need to find either a Time Agent or a version of himself from after the Time War to catch a ride without causing a paradox. That was likely to take decades.  
  
But Reinette solved the problem, at her own expense. She had the same look in her eyes that Sarah Jane had, the one that said she’d waited for him forever. How could he leave a trail of devastated humans in his wake, when he could have spent a few decades with each without using up much of his own lifespan?  
  
The least he could do was take her on a trip, but he was too late even for that.  
  
Rose came into the console room about an hour after he read Reinette’s letter.  
  
“I kissed her,” he said without turning around. “I suppose you’ll want to tell me off for that.”  
  
He heard her draw in a sharp breath.  
  
“So everything you’ve said about caring about me, and not leaving me, and me being special. That was all a lie?” she asked.  
  
“Of course not,” he snapped, and turned around. He knew she didn’t deserve his anger, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “You know exactly how I feel about you, Rose.”  
  
“Did you love her? Madame de Pompadour?”  
  
“She loved me.”  
  
“Do you love me?”  
  
“How can you ask me that?”  
  
“Because you never say!”  
  
“Such a human word, ‘love.’ You people will use it for anything,” he said. He knew he was being unfair, even cruel, but Reinette’s letter was weighing down his pocket, guilt that could never be atoned for, to go with all the rest of his regrets. “You love your mum, you love your boyfriend, you love chips, you love a shirt. It’s meaningless. I have shown you exactly how I feel about you, and if you want to call it love then be my guest, but I’m not going to use a worse form of communication to tell you an approximation of something I’ve already shown you!”  
  
“You’re being a prat!”  
  
“No, Rose, you’re being an alien. You’re mad at me for something I did before you were even born. You want me to use a particular word that your culture has told you means absolutely everything, even though it wouldn’t give you any information you don’t already have. And then you’ve got some absurd notion that my feelings for anyone else could possibly negate my feelings for you--that’s not even true of everyone in your own species! How is this different from when you were kissing me and shagging Jack?”  
  
“Don’t you dare mention Jack, not after you left him on that space station! And it’s different because I didn’t love Jack!”  
  
“Really? Your feelings for Jack were less than your feelings for...let me think, what’s the last thing I heard you say you love...that Crebullian hot chocolate, that was it.”  
  
“What? No! Of course I cared more about him than about that chocolate. I loved him as a friend, that’s different!”  
  
“See? This is why I don’t use words when I can just send you my feelings!”  
  
“You--this isn’t even about that, it’s about you falling for that  _whore!_ ”  
  
“No. We are not doing that,” he said. “I understand that the social formula from your time dictates that you should be denigrating Reinette, but she was a brilliant woman and you would have liked her if you met her some other way, and now she’s dead. Insult me if you need to, but leave her out of it.”  
  
“How was it going to be if she traveled with us?” Rose asked. “Because let me tell you, I’m no queen of France and I would  _not_  have made friends with your  _mistress._ ”  
  
“I wasn’t going to shag her. I just wanted to take her on one trip, Rose. To see a star, up close, because she’d always dreamed of it. Because she was the one who figured out how I could get back to you right away, instead of spending a few decades trying to hitch a ride with a Time Agent.” He sighed. “Although it’s possible that I would have gotten back slightly sooner from your perspective if I had done that, so I suppose I apologize for that.”  
  
“I can’t deal with this right now,” Rose said. “I can’t believe you cheated on me, right after Sarah Jane and all.”  
  
The Doctor rubbed a hand across his face, and managed to keep himself from pointing out that they’d never explicitly agreed to be monogamous. He’d known she expected it.  
  
“I’m going to bed,” she said. “And tomorrow, you’re taking us someplace brilliant, and you’re not so much as  _looking_  at another woman while we’re there. After that, we’ll talk.”  
  
“Fair enough.”  
  
“Good night, Doctor.” She turned and marched away.  
  
“Good night, Rose,” he whispered after her.

 


	7. Someplace Brilliant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place between "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Rise of the Cybermen."

When Rose woke up, for a moment she wasn’t sure why her head hurt and her eyes were puffy. Then she remembered that she’d cried herself to sleep the night before, and why.  
  
Someone was knocking on her door, and if it was the Doctor, she might actually break up with him. He knew better.  
  
“The TARDIS had better be on fire--” she snapped, opening the door. “Oh. Mickey.”  
  
“Morning,” he said, eyeing her warily. “I don’t think the TARDIS is on fire. Just thought you might let me know what actually happened last night, before I run into the Doctor.”  
  
“Nothing, really. We rowed for a bit, and then I told him to take us someplace brilliant today and that we’ll talk after, and then I went to bed.”  
  
“What, seriously? That’s it, you’re not breaking up with him or anything?”  
  
“Guess it depends on how talking tonight goes.”  
  
“What exactly could he say that would make up for shagging some French--”  
  
“He didn’t shag her,” Rose said, cutting him off. In retrospect, she did feel sort of bad for calling her a whore the night before. Dying while she waited for the Doctor to come back for her was pretty sad, after all.  
  
“Oh, yeah, I believe that.”  
  
“No, really. The Doctor is...um, he’s different. From a human, I mean. He can’t have sex with a human if he’s just met them. If he doesn’t prepare them first, he’ll hurt them, and he didn’t have time to do that with her even if he wanted to.”  
  
Mickey made a horrified face, and then his eyes dropped to Rose’s pajama bottoms.  
  
“Not like that! It’s a telepathy thing, he had to prepare my  _mind._  God.”  
  
“...right. Well, I’ve...completely forgotten what I was about to say.”  
  
“So go away and let me get dressed, and then we’ll see where the Doctor’s taken us.”  
  
“Yeah, all right.”  
  
Once Rose had dressed, they walked to the console room together. Mickey was sort of riding the line between moral support and nuisance, but in this case, she was willing to let it slide.  
  
“Bet he takes us somewhere rubbish,” he grumbled. “Probably the planet of the Slitheen, or something.”  
  
“Raxacoricofallapatorius isn’t that bad, actually,” Rose said. “Smells a bit, but the people there are very nice. The Slitheen were criminals, you know. Can’t judge a whole planet by the criminals.”  
  
“Still, though. Bet he’ll take us somewhere rubbish, and won’t shut up about how great it is the whole time we’re there.”  
  
“Oh, good, you’re both awake!” the Doctor said as they walked in. Rose was shocked to see that rather than his usual suit, he was wearing bathing shorts, a t-shirt, and sunglasses. She could actually see his knees. And they weren’t even in bed!  
  
“Are we going swimming?” she asked.  
  
“Yep!” he said, enthusiastically popping the p. “We’re on the planet Florana. Most beautiful world in several galaxies, this. And we’re absolutely, positively in the right place and time; I already checked. Three times, in fact.”  
  
“Why don’t you usually do that?” Mickey asked.  
  
“Ah, where’s the fun in that?” he asked. Then his face turned serious. “Couldn’t muck up today, though. This is important.”  
  
He gave Rose such a heartfelt look that she felt her face heat up.  
  
The Doctor had packed a beach-picnic breakfast, and had the TARDIS set up a changing area just off the console room where Rose and Mickey could get into bathing suits. He’d taken them to a time when the planet was uninhabited, he explained, because otherwise the crowds would be unbearable.  
  
It was an incredibly beautiful world, just as he’d said. The beach was gorgeous, the water just the right temperature, the breeze refreshing and floral-scented. The three of them spent all day swimming, sunbathing, and exploring the little grove of trees near the TARDIS, which turned out to be growing the most delicious fruit Rose had ever tasted.  
  
“They don’t store well at all,” the Doctor explained while the three of them munched on the pinkish-orange spheres. “Go bad in just a day or two, no matter what you do. So the only way is to get them fresh, and the only place to do that is Florana. I tried to grow them on the TARDIS, but I couldn’t get them to germinate.”  
  
“They’re gorgeous,” Rose enthused. “Tastes like...mango-pineapple, with a bit of raspberry.”  
  
By the time they’d finished stuffing themselves with fruit, the sun was going down in a purple glory of a sunset. Rose lay on a towel on the beach, sighing contentedly. She heard the Doctor clear his throat behind her, and he must have made some sort of gesture at Mickey, who mumbled something about going back to the TARDIS and vanished.  
  
The Doctor lay on the towel beside Rose, and reached out in the twilight for her hand. He didn’t say anything until the sun had set and an infinity of stars were shining down on them.  
  
“I am sorry, Rose,” he said quietly. “We should have talked a long time ago, about a lot of things, and I’m the one who knew to bring it up. But we were always either dealing with a crisis or having such fun, or both at the same time, and it never seemed like the right moment.”  
  
“What do we need to talk about?” she asked, equally quiet. Something made her not want to speak above the soothing rush of the waves.  
  
“Us. Our...relationship, I suppose. Our expectations.” He took a deep breath. “Rose, you’re the most important person in my life right now, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon. I don’t  _want_  it to change. But there are other people out there in time and space who are important to me too, and there will be others. That’s not going to change the way I feel about you, but I also can’t change the way I feel about them.”  
  
“But...isn’t that what a relationship is, Doctor? Promising that you’re not going to feel for someone else the way you feel for the person you’re with?”  
  
“Only in some times, and some places. It was never like that for Time Lords. I just don’t work that way.”  
  
Rose collected her thoughts for a moment.  
  
“I’m not trying to say you can’t care about anyone else. I just don’t want you to be  _with_  anyone else while you’re with me,” she said at last.  
  
“But what does ‘with’ mean? And for that matter, what does ‘while’ mean? I could have been trapped at Versailles for decades, Rose, and it would only have been a few hours for you. Would you have wanted me to be alone the whole time?”  
  
“I don’t know. I sort of want to say yes, but you’re right, that doesn’t seem fair.”  
  
“So I’m going to say how I’d like things to be, and then you tell me what does and doesn’t work for you, all right?” the Doctor said.  
  
“Yeah, all right.”  
  
“First off, I want the TARDIS to be your home as much as mine. So neither of us will invite anyone aboard unless the other agrees. I should have talked to you before I invited Reinette, and I’m sorry that I didn’t. Since you know I’m not going to leave the TARDIS for very long voluntarily, that puts a pretty hard limit on how involved I can get with anyone else, you know?”  
  
“I’m not going to leave, either,” Rose said, and squeezed his hand. “That sounds good. What else?”  
  
“You know I can’t have sex with anyone else without a lot of preparation first. I won’t start doing that unless we’ve talked about it, not unless we’re going to be separated for years. That doesn’t have to go for you, by the way. I don’t mind if you want to have sex with somebody else.”  
  
“Really?” she asked, skeptically.  
  
“Really. Rose, I know how you feel about me. I  _know._  I’ve felt it. You shagging somebody else isn’t going to threaten that.”  
  
“Well, okay. But I don’t think I’d be okay with you shagging someone else, Doctor.”  
  
“I doubt it’ll even come up. Nine hundred years and I’ve shagged eight people, including you. But I’m not okay with ruling it out completely. Can you understand that?”  
  
“I guess,” she said. “And you’ll tell me if you do anything with anyone, right? Kiss them or anything?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Okay. Yeah, I think I’m okay with that. Just don’t run around doing it all the time, all right? And...if you won’t say you love me, will you at least show me how you feel? Right now, please.”  
  
The Doctor leaned over and kissed her, and she could feel his love, even if he didn’t want to call it that, flow into her. She clung to him, greedily drinking it down.  
  
 _I won’t say I didn’t care for her,_  he told her.  _But I wouldn’t have left you for a thousand of her. Not if there was any other way to save the timeline._  
  
His voice in her mind rang with sincerity. She felt tears of relief flow down her face, and sent him all the fear she’d been repressing that she couldn’t possibly measure up to someone so beautiful and accomplished and all-around wonderful.  
  
The feeling of the Doctor in her mind turned into a sort of radiant mirror, and she felt him showing her how he saw her. Brave and kind and clever and loving, a shining light, a healing balm, a million wonderful things that she’d never seen in herself before.  
  
They made love on the beach, gently and carefully, and Rose felt more certain that the Doctor cared for her than she ever had of anything.


	8. Jackie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place between "The Age of Steel" and "The Idiot's Lantern."

The Doctor leaned against the TARDIS, feeling awkward and superfluous as he watched Rose sob into her mother’s shoulder. He didn’t know whether Rose wanted him to give them some privacy or to stay; she hadn’t exactly been coherent on the flight there.  
  
“What did you think you were doing?” Jackie demanded of the Doctor when Rose had finished her jumbled summary of events. “Taking her off to another universe to watch her mum get killed--you think that’s fun, do you? You ought to be ashamed.”  
  
“It wasn’t the Doctor’s fault, mum,” Rose choked out. “He didn’t mean to go there, and he told me not to try to find you--the other you, I mean. I just couldn’t help it.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, I know all about his ‘accidents,’” Jackie muttered. “And where’s Mickey? ‘Gone home,’ you said, that could mean anything.”  
  
Rose cried harder, unable to answer.  
  
“He decided to stay,” the Doctor said, tugging on his ear. “To help out in the other universe.”  
  
“His gran was alive there,” Rose sobbed. “And he didn’t have anything to come back to here, and it’s all my fault.”  
  
The Doctor opened his mouth to protest, but Jackie beat him to it.  
  
“Oh, sweetheart, it wasn’t your fault. You don’t owe it to anyone to be their girlfriend, you know that. If he wanted to stay, well, that was his choice, I s’pose.”  
  
“I know, mum,” Rose said. “I do. It just hurts. And he only even came with us because he thought the Doctor was going to leave me and I’d need help.”  
  
The Doctor flinched under Jackie’s glare.  
  
“Maybe the Doctor ought to leave us alone for a bit,” she said sharply. “D’you mind?”  
  
“Er, right, I’ll just--” he started, reaching for the TARDIS door.  
  
“I don’t want him to go, mum,” Rose said, pushing down her grief for a moment. “He wasn’t really going to leave. It was a misunderstanding, and we’re properly together now. I want him here.”  
  
The Doctor winced, ready to dodge a slap.  
  
“Properly together, are you? Better than all that ‘he’s better than that’ nonsense, I suppose.” She gently disentangled herself from her daughter and guided her to sit on the sofa. “I’m going to put on the kettle, sweetheart. Then we’ll talk, all right?”  
  
“Yeah, sounds good, mum,” Rose mumbled.  
  
The Doctor moved to sit beside her.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t plan on telling her. I just didn’t want you to leave.”  
  
“It’s all right,” he said. “Suppose trying to hide it was getting a bit silly. I sort of expected her to hit me again, though.”  
  
“She likes you, really,” Rose assured him. “I mean, be fair, she thought you’d kidnapped me for a year when she hit you.”  
  
“I suppose.”  
  
Rose yawned, leaning against him, and he couldn’t help but put his arm around her. By the time Jackie emerged with the tea, Rose had fallen asleep.  
  
“She’s had a long day,” he explained quietly. “Must be, oh, thirty-some hours since she had a chance to sleep.”  
  
“Running her ragged, are you?” Jackie asked, but there was no heat in the question.  
  
“I try not to, but she never says when she’s tired,” he said. “Not when there’s someone to save.”  
  
“It’s hard, having a daughter who’s a hero.”  
  
“She is that,” the Doctor agreed.  
  
The two of them drank their tea in silence for a moment, listening to Rose’s soft snores.  
  
“She says you’re the last of your kind,” Jackie said. “You’re not thinking of repopulating your species with her or anything daft like that, are you?”  
  
The Doctor choked on his tea.  
  
“Couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he said when he’d recovered. “Genetically incompatible. No need to worry about that.”  
  
“So no grandkids, then.”  
  
“She’s not going to be with me forever, Jackie.”  
  
Jackie raised her eyebrows skeptically. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“Nothing bad!” he assured her hastily. “I’ll always  _want_  her with me. But it’s a funny sort of life, on the TARDIS. Always running about, never in one place for too long. She may think so now, but she’s not going to want that forever.”  
  
“And you wouldn’t settle down, if she wanted to? Park that box, stay in one place for a few decades?”  
  
He took another drink of tea and didn’t answer.  
  
“Ah, well,” Jackie sighed. “You two’ll figure it out. Or you won’t, and she’ll move on. Long as you’re treating her right, I’ll not meddle.”  
  
“You’re a good woman, Jackie Tyler,” the Doctor said. “And a great mum.”  
  
“Oh, don’t go trying to butter me up,” she said. “I did say long as you’re treating her right. And here she is, all tuckered out after nearly two days awake, you said, and her best mate worried you were going to leave her for some mysterious reason. Plus you being an alien and all, who knows what sort of weird things you’re talking her into. And the age difference, my god.”  
  
“Leave him alone, mum,” Rose mumbled, waking up. “The Doctor’s the best man I’ve ever known. Dad even approved of him, ‘cept for the age thing.”  
  
“Doesn’t mean he can run you ragged. And there’s reason to be worried about the age thing, you know. What if he’s got a wife somewhere?”  
  
“He hasn’t got a wife somewhere. Right, Doctor?”  
  
“Definitely not,” he said firmly.  
  
“He hasn’t made you do anything weird and alien, has he, Rose?” Jackie asked, lowering her voice as though he wasn’t sitting right there.  
  
“The Doctor doesn’t  _make_  me do anything You’ve been badgering him the whole time I was asleep, haven’t you?” She sounded exasperated, but also fond and comfortable.  
  
The Doctor couldn’t be entirely sure, but he thought he saw Jackie wink at him before diving wholeheartedly into the familiarity of a mother-daughter squabble.


	9. Krop Tor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place during the episode "The Impossible Planet." It contains explicit sex with a BDSM component (the Doctor is the dom).

Rose had been worried that she would have to sleep in a cupboard or something, but she and the Doctor were given a room to share. Apparently enough of the crew had died before they arrived on Krop Tor that there was space to spare.  
  
“So I was thinking,” she said to the Doctor as she got ready for bed. “We could probably get a spaceship to live on, yeah? Might be smaller on the inside and all, but it’d be better than a house.”  
  
“I think you need money for that,” the Doctor said. He was sitting on the bed in pants and his undershirt. “And I doubt UNIT’s still around at this point. No way for me to pick up my back wages.”  
  
“We’ll figure something out. You’re clever, and all.” She sat next to him in knickers and her vest top and reached for his hand. “Maybe we can liberate the Ood, or something, and then write a book about it. Oh, you could write history books!”  
  
He made a face. “That sounds deathly dull. The writing part, not the Ood-liberating.”  
  
“Well, once we’ve got a ship, we can be explorers. Go back to doing what we did before, just in space instead of space and time both.”  
  
“Rose...once we’re far enough away from the TARDIS, you’re not even going to be able to understand what anyone’s saying.”  
  
“You mean they’re not speaking English?”  
  
“Not 21st-century English, no.”  
  
“Well...I can learn. You’ll just have to translate for me until I do.”  
  
“Yeah.” He gave her a half-smile. “That’ll be my job. Rose Tyler’s translator.”  
  
“Oh? And how am I supposed to pay you?”  
  
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his face into her neck, squeezing her just a little too tightly.  
  
Rose tried to nudge his face up for a kiss, but he stayed where he was.  
  
“Kiss me, Doctor,” she whispered.  
  
“I’m not sure I should,” he muttered. “I’m a bit of a mess on the inside, at the moment.”  
  
“So share it with me.” In the months since Florana, Rose had come to appreciate the benefits of being able to share feelings directly, without having to worry about miscommunication. Even if she did still wish he’d say he loved her.  
  
“Losing the TARDIS...it’s mucking with my head.” He didn’t move his face from where it was firmly pressed against her neck, and Rose suppressed a shiver at the feel of his stubble scraping against her skin. “And it almost feels like there’s something else about, something trying to get in.”  
  
“Trying to get in...your head?”  
  
“Maybe? I don’t know. I can’t really explain the feeling, and you’re not telepathic enough to be affected. And then again, it’s probably just from worrying about the TARDIS.”  
  
“What’s going to happen to her?” Rose asked.  
  
“If we can’t get to her? Well, she’ll die, I suppose. Not...not painfully, or anything, she’ll just sort of fade away.” He pulled away from Rose and flopped down onto the bed, arm over his eyes. “Gallifrey’s last daughter, gone to dust.”  
  
“Gallifrey?”  
  
“That’s what my planet was called, didn’t I tell you?”  
  
“No.” Rose lay down, pillowing her head on the Doctor’s chest.  
  
“Well, that’s what it was called. Gallifrey, home planet of the Time Lords and the TARDISes. Well, of a race of entities, one of which inhabits the TARDIS. Well, I say inhabits...it’s complicated, in a multidimensional sort of way.”  
  
“Ain’t it always,” Rose said, and pressed a kiss to his collarbone.  
  
“Nah,” he said, putting his arm around her. “This right here? You and me? Dead simple.”  
  
Moving slowly, giving him plenty of time to turn away, Rose sat up a bit and leaned over to kiss him. He kissed back, gently, and she could feel fear and grief mixed in with the love he sent her.  
  
He let her push away their clothing until they were skin-against-skin. Although he willingly lifted up to help her remove his clothing, he didn’t respond to her attempts to deepen their kiss or to her wandering hands. He just held her and passively accepted her attentions.  
  
If she hadn’t been able to feel his emotions, she would have thought he just wasn’t in the mood. But there was a sense of barely-held restraint slipping through, as though he was somehow afraid of letting go.  
  
 _Let me distract you, for a little while,_  she thought at him.  _I want to help. I want you.  
  
I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.  
  
You could never.  
  
Oh, yes I could,_ he thought grimly, but there was a sort of unwanted thrill behind the thought, and she felt an answering surge of need in herself.  
  
He sent her an image of her mind as a bauble of glass filigree that glowed from within, held in a hand that could crush it with a twitch of its fingers, that could shatter her in a moment of carelessness. And he never, ever would, but there was a terrible excitement in his strength and her fragility, in the trust she showed each time she welcomed him into her mind and her body. He had lost the TARDIS and he had lost control of his life, and a part of him needed (or at least wanted) to make up for it by controlling her.  
  
With that thought, there came an apologetic rush of embarrassment and shame, and he began to pull back from the kiss.  
  
 _Don’t you dare,_  she thought to him, and sent him her own embarrassment-tinged arousal.  _Don’t send me things like that unless you’re going to follow through, mister.  
  
I don’t want to hurt you.  
  
What if I want you to?  
  
I don’t want to _harm _you,_  he amended, but she could feel his excitement rising. She shifted her leg over him and moaned into his mouth when she felt his erection against her thigh.  
  
 _Are you really, truly worried that you’re going to lose control and break my mind?_  she asked.  _Or are you just sort of embarrassed by wanting to play a bit rough? Because if it’s the second one, Doctor, you’ve been holding out on me._  
  
He yanked his mouth away from hers. For a moment she was afraid that meant it was actually the first of the two, but then he flipped them over on the bed, pinning her beneath him with a growl.  
  
Putting a hand to her temple, the Doctor simultaneously sank his teeth into Rose’s neck and his mind into hers, overwhelming her with sensations, some physical, some mental, some she could barely even understand. Impressions from senses that she didn’t even have and images of herself in infrared and ultraviolet mixed with feelings of fierce love and desire and domination.  
  
His bony thigh pressed against her vulva, but it was his presence in her mind that was sending her shooting towards orgasm, as if he was stimulating the nerves directly. Perhaps that was exactly what he was doing, because she’d never come from so little physical stimulation before, and she was already on the edge.  
  
 _Come for me,_  he ordered, and bit into the side of her breast. She instantly and involuntarily obeyed, clutching at him and pressing up into him desperately, and the orgasm went on and on and on--  
  
And then stopped abruptly as the Doctor moved off her, pulling her along with his hands firmly clasped on her temples. Not sure what he was doing, she bonelessly let him move her until she was sitting up with her legs spread and him up on his knees between them, his cock right at the height of her face.  
  
She’d never sucked the Doctor off before; it hadn’t seemed like an option, since he normally maintained the telepathic connection that he needed by keeping his lips on hers. That wasn’t a concern with his hands against her temples, though, and she wondered why she’d never thought of that before. She liked giving head.  
  
 _Suck,_  he demanded, and she eagerly complied, working her lips down inch by inch until she was taking him all the way to the back of her throat every time she bobbed her head. Without changing the rhythm, the Doctor stopped her movements and began thrusting instead, pushing his cock down her throat.  
  
He was gasping and sending her wave after wave of his own pleasure. Looking up at him, feeling him in her mind, she truly felt as fragile as the image he’d shown her, and the feeling was electric.  
  
Then he held her face against his groin, shuddering as he emptied himself into her, and her mind was overwhelmed.  
  
Rose wasn’t aware of her surroundings for at least a few moments after that. When she returned to herself, she was lying in the Doctor’s arms, and her mouth tasted of semen.  
  
“Sort of thought it would taste different,” she mumbled.  
  
“You’re all right! For a moment, I thought…”  
  
“Oh, don’t be daft, I’m fine. Not even a headache. God, that was  _amazing._ ”  
  
“You’re sure?” he asked anxiously. “I’m afraid I got a bit carried away…”  
  
“You must have felt how good it was for me. That whole ‘I’ve shown you exactly how I feel’ thing goes both ways, Doctor!” She snuggled against him, sighing happily. “Lay with me until I fall asleep?”  
  
“I’d love to,” he said, and kissed her softly on the forehead.


	10. Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place between "Fear Her" and "Army of Ghosts."

Seeing the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics in person had been a rather brilliant idea, if the Doctor did say so himself. Some people had gone home despite having tickets after the shock of being disappeared and reappeared, so he and Rose even managed to get decent seats.  
  
She was sort of physically clinging to him more than usual, probably because he’d gone all ominous and given her that “there’s a storm coming” line. Fears, premonitions...he’d always been rubbish at trying to tell his own future, but he was certain there was something approaching.  
  
It wasn’t until the festivities had concluded for the day and they were back on the TARDIS that he remembered the other bit of information he’d blurted out.  
  
“So, Doctor,” Rose began as they started their evening tea, “When were you planning on telling me I’d been shagging a dad?”  
  
“Er...now, I suppose?” he said, tugging on his ear self-consciously. “I was a grandfather, too. Is that a problem?” He may, in fact, have been a great-grandfather as well, but since Susan had been erased from the timeline along with the rest of the Time Lords, there was no way for him to find out.  
  
“No, I just...I guess it’s just hard to see you as a family man,” she said. “But I’d like to hear about them, if it doesn’t hurt too much. Your kids, I mean.”  
  
“I only ever had the one,” he said. Maybe it was time to talk. He’d brought it up, after all. “My daughter. She called herself the Sculptor. Brilliant artist, she was. Spent lifetimes working on her masterpiece--I mean literal lifetimes, one regeneration after another. And at least a few times, as soon as she regenerated she went back in time to help herself with the work. It was a great big diamond crystal, assembled atom by atom, like tatting lace. Equally beautiful at any level of magnification, down to nearly the atomic level.”  
  
“Like a, what do you call it, a fractal, yeah?”  
  
“No, a fractal looks same at every level of magnification. Her sculpture was different. Like looking at a completely new work of art, depending on how close you looked and where you were looking, and where you were looking from. Dimensionally transcendent, too--I can’t really explain it. She couldn’t really explain it to me, even. I’ve never been much of an artist. But it was beautiful.”  
  
“She sounds lovely.”  
  
“Oh, she was. We didn’t always get on, of course. Two very different people. She didn’t have the slightest interest in leaving Gallifrey, and I couldn’t wait to get away. Her daughter, though, that was a different story. My granddaughter, Susan. She was the first person I traveled with.”  
  
“Susan? Doesn’t sound like a very Time Lord sort of name.”  
  
“It’s the name she chose. Actually, in our language, she named herself the Human, but in English she called herself Susan.” Her name had in fact literally translated as ‘the Member-of-a-lesser-species,’ and was connotatively similar to ‘the Vermin,’ or something ruder. Susan had been rather passionate about challenging the Time Lords’ superiority complex. Rose didn’t need to know about that, though. “Mad about you lot, she was. I couldn’t understand it at the time.”  
  
Rose reached out and took his hand, but didn’t say anything, just continued to listen.  
  
“You would have loved her, Rose. Bright, brave, curious about everything. I don’t know if I’d have gotten up the courage to steal the TARDIS if it hadn’t been for her, and I know I wouldn’t have learned to empathize with people who weren’t Time Lords if she hadn’t taught me.” A lump rose in his throat. He’d always meant to go back and see her again, but he’d kept putting it off, and then the war came and it was too late.  
  
“What about the Sculptor’s mother?” Rose asked hesitantly. “What was she like?”  
  
“That’s...sort of a complicated question. I mean, for starters, she was only a ‘she’ about a quarter of the time. His first body was male, and that was when I met him. We were in school together. When we were raising the Sculptor, I was on my first body and he was on his third regeneration, which was also male. Time Lords didn’t procreate the, er, the messy fun sort of way. Couldn’t, actually. Overengineered.” He glanced at Rose to see how she was taking this.  
  
“Wait, so...have  _you_  always been a bloke?” she asked.  
  
“Yep. Most of us were either all one or all the other, but some switched back and forth practically every time, and some, like him, leaned one way but sort of dabbled in the other. Suppose I could still come back female someday, but at this point it seems more likely that my gender identity’s set.”  
  
“Oh.” She took a moment to digest this information, staring pensively into her tea. “So what was his name?”  
  
The Doctor took a moment to consider how to answer. It was the height of rudeness and disrespect to use someone’s given name after they’d taken their chosen name, but...there were some extenuating circumstances.  
  
“Koschei,” he said finally. “His name was Koschei.”  
  
“Did he travel with you, too?”  
  
“No, he traveled on his own, many lifetimes later. The Sculptor always thought it was a bit of a joke, her being the biggest homebody around and having the two most infamous renegades ever to leave Gallifrey as parents.” He took a drink of his tea. “I think I’d rather not talk about them any more just now, if you don’t mind.”  
  
“Course not,” Rose said, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for telling me.”  
  
“She’d nearly finished,” he whispered, unable to stop despite what he’d just said. “The greatest sculpture in all of time and space. She’d almost finished it when the war started. I was going to go get Susan--hadn’t seen her in ages--and bring her back to Gallifrey to see her mother’s great work completed. I hoped they’d reconcile, and that Koschei would be there, an early enough Koschei that he wouldn’t be...that we could be a family.”  
  
Rose got up and moved to stand beside his chair, leaning down to wrap her arms around him.  
  
“You’ve still got me,” she said. “I know I can’t replace them, and I wouldn’t want to try, but I’m here.”  
  
“I know,” he said, and clung to her. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's my take on the Doctor's family, at least for purposes of this series. The Sculptor is my own creation, as is the idea that the Master had several female regenerations in the past and the idea that he and the Doctor had a child together. Having Koschei as the Master's old name comes from some book I haven't read, but since it's in fairly common use in the fandom, I went with it. Please let me know what you think!


	11. Pete's World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place at the end of "Doomsday."

For five and a half hours, Rose sat and stared at a blank white wall.  
  
Jackie stayed with her for the first hour, but by then things had calmed down and Pete was ready to show her around the place. Mickey sat with her then.  
  
“How long’s it been for you?” Rose asked. “Seems like time runs different on this side.”  
  
“Five years,” he said. “You?”  
  
“Sort of lost track,” she admitted. “But it’s been less than one year for mum. Can’t have been much more than a year for me, I shouldn’t think.”  
  
“So even if he does come to get you…”  
  
“He will. He’ll figure something out. But yeah, it might take a while.” She swallowed. “Might take a very long while. And I’m not going to spend all of it moping. But I need my five and a half hours.”  
  
“Yeah, I understand.”  
  
“How’ve you been, anyway?” Rose asked. “How’s your gran?”  
  
“Oh...she passed away, year and a half back.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Rose said, reaching out to squeeze his hand.  
  
“Yeah. It was better this time, though. Peaceful, and all. And I’ve been good. It’s exciting, working for Torchwood and all. And your dad’s a good boss.”  
  
“That’s good.”  
  
“How about you?”  
  
“I’ve been fantastic,” she said, and smiled. “It’s been really, really good. And life-threatening sometimes, but mostly good.”  
  
“Doctor’s been good to you, then? No more Sarah Janes and Madame de Whatsherfaces?”  
  
“He’s been great.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
The hours stretched on, and Mickey was called away for debriefing. Rose spent the last hour and a half of her vigil alone.  
  
At five hours and thirty-five minutes, she stood up, brushed off her jeans, and went to wash her face. When she got out of the ladies’, Pete was waiting.  
  
“Mickey said you should be about done by now,” he told her. “Come and have some supper.”  
  
It was bizarre, eating dinner in a posh flat with her mum and Pete. Jackie alternated between talking a mile a minute about people Pete couldn’t possibly know and Rose didn’t particularly care about, and staring silently at her plate. Pete did a lot of nodding. Rose just ate.  
  
“I can get you two set up in a place of your own, if you like,” Pete said at the end of the meal. “Torchwood’s got a fund for resettling alien refugees. Doesn’t generally apply to humans, but I think we could make an exception, seeing how you’re from another universe and all. But if you wanted to stay with me, that’d be...well. I don’t have the mansion any more, but I’ve got a couple of spare rooms. We could give the whole family thing a go, if you like.”  
  
“Course we’ll stay,” Jackie said. “Won’t we, sweetheart?”  
  
“Sure,” Rose said. “I’ll stay until the Doctor comes and gets me. You think you could show me one of those spare rooms? I’m knackered.”  
  
As she was drifting off to sleep, she heard the sounds of wine being poured and low voices from the kitchen, and smiled to herself.  
  
Learning the difference between Pete’s world and her own universe kept Rose busy for a few weeks after that. She thought the Doctor would probably be interested in hearing about it. There was a huge class separation, for one thing; a lot of the very rich barely ever set foot on the ground. Pete was trying to change that, though, and President Harriet Jones was introducing a lot of social mobility initiatives, but when she’d taken office there hadn’t even been universal healthcare, and education was only free up to grade 8.  
  
The other big difference was that everyone in Pete’s world knew about aliens. Torchwood was a completely public organization, working with the UN and with various groups of aliens living openly on Earth. The fact that Rose and Jackie came from another universe was considered interesting and newsworthy, but not at all unbelievable.  
  
It was strange, being a bit of a celebrity. Rose worked hard to keep herself thinking of it as a fun vacation. Just like any other trip with the Doctor...except without him.  
  
Pete brought Rose in as a consultant on a case-by-case basis, mainly to help with diplomacy with alien races she’d met in her travels. It galled her to have to rely on a translator.  
  
They’d only been in Pete’s World for two months when Pete and Jackie married (or remarried, whichever was the appropriate term under the circumstances). Pete got Jackie’s entire name right. When Rose asked her mother whether it was normal in that universe not to have a line in the vows about “forsaking all others,” Jackie blushed and changed the subject. Rose decided she didn’t want to know.  
  
Two months later, Jackie was pregnant, and there was still no word from the Doctor. Rose went to a nightclub after the baby shower and almost went home with a broad-shouldered bloke in a leather jacket, but changed her mind when he kissed her and she couldn’t feel anything behind it, not a hint of his thoughts or feelings or anything.  
  
Mickey started seeing a girl named Adeola, but that only lasted a month. Rose and Jake took him out for drinks after she dumped him, which was when Rose learned that Jake and Ricky had been a couple and that he and Mickey had given it a brief go before Mickey concluded that he was straight after all. They were still good friends, though; apparently what they’d been through in Paris had created a bond that incompatible orientations couldn’t break.  
  
Five and a half months after the walls closed, Rose dreamed she heard the Doctor calling her name.


	12. Coda

_Five and a half months earlier_  
  
When Pete refused to let her jump back to get Rose, Jackie fought him. Physically fought him, arms flailing until he grabbed her firmly by the wrists. Then she collapsed against him, crying onto his familiar-unfamiliar shoulder.  
  
She was still sobbing when she heard that unmistakable sound--the TARDIS materializing.  
  
“That daft man,” she said, tears turning into laughter. “I’m not sure he knows what ‘impossible’ even means.”  
  
But when the box finished appearing and the door opened, Rose didn’t come running out to meet her. It wasn’t even the Doctor. It was some redheaded woman.  
  
“You’re Pete, right?” she asked Pete. “Great! I know the Doctor told you not to use the jumpers again, but the fate of several universes depends on you using them one last time, and it may seem like I’m exaggerating, but I’m really not.”  
  
She rushed out of the TARDIS and grabbed Pete by the shoulders, maneuvering him to a specific spot near the wall.  
  
“All right, stand right there.” She looked at her watch. “When I tell you to go, you press that button, catch Rose Tyler, and then press it again, all right? Don’t fall into the vortex, and don’t let her fall either, got it? Three...two...one...and go!”  
  
Pete pressed the button and disappeared.  
  
“Should take just enough time over there for us to clear out,” the redheaded woman said, running back to the TARDIS.  
  
“Wait a minute! Stop right there!” Jackie said. “Who are you? Where’s the Doctor? Where’s  _Rose?_ ”  
  
“Rose will be along in a minute,” the woman said, sticking her head out the door. “Can’t explain the rest, sorry, and you can’t tell her about this! Not until after you’ve seen me again, got it? But not right away, wait until everything’s calmed down again. Tra!”  
  
She shut the door, and the TARDIS made that sound again. Just as it finished disappearing, Pete reappeared, holding Rose.  
  
Jackie didn’t know what to make of the whole thing, so she convinced Pete not to tell Rose about it yet. She didn’t get the chance to tell the story until years later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a Tentoo/Rose sequel in the future, but first, keep an eye out for "The Professor and the Physician," Martha's chapter of "The Doctor and the Dreamers."


End file.
